On January 4, 1964, Mary Sullivan was raped and strangled
to death at her Boston apartment. The killer left a card reading "Happy
New Year" leaning against her foot. Sullivan would turn out to be the last
woman killed by the notorious Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, who terrorized
the city between 1962 and 1964, raping and killing over a dozen women.

DeSalvo's serial-killing career was shaped at an early
age. His father would bring home prostitutes and have sex with them in front of
the family, before brutally beating his wife and children. On one occasion,
DeSalvo's father knocked out his mother's teeth and then broke her fingers one
by one while she lay unconscious on the floor. DeSalvo himself was sold by his
father to work as a farm laborer, along with two of his sisters. In the late
1950s, as a young man, DeSalvo acquired the first of his criminal nicknames. He
knocked on the doors of young women, claiming to represent a modeling agency.
He told the women that he needed to take their measurements and proceeded to
crudely fondle the women as he used his tape measure. His stint as the
"Measuring Man" came to an end with his arrest on March 17, 1960, and
he spent nearly a year in prison. When DeSalvo was released, his next series of
crimes were far worse. For nearly two years, he broke into hundreds of
apartments in New England, tied up the women and sexually assaulted them. He
always wore green handyman clothes during his assaults and became known as the
"Green Man."

In 1962, DeSalvo started killing his victims. He
strangled Anna Slesers with her own housecoat and tied the ends in a bow, which
would become his trademark. Throughout the summer of 1962, DeSalvo raped and
killed elderly women in Boston. However, by winter he began attacking younger
women, always leaving the rope or cord used to strangle the victim in a bow. Police,
who were thwarted in their attempts to stop the newly dubbed "Boston
Strangler," even brought in a psychic to inspect the clothes of the
victims. However, it was DeSalvo himself who enabled the police to close the
case. On October 27, 1964, after raping another young woman, he suddenly
stopped before killing her. When the victim called police and gave a
description of her attacker, police arrested DeSalvo. DeSalvo confessed the
murders to his cellmate George Nasser. Nasser told his attorney, F. Lee Bailey,
about DeSalvo, and Bailey took on DeSalvo as a client. Under a deal with
prosecutors, DeSalvo was never charged with the Boston Strangler crimes,
getting a life sentence instead for the Green Man rapes. Still, DeSalvo's life
term was short. He was stabbed to death by an unidentified fellow inmate at
Walpole State Prison on November 26, 1973.

Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of six nonfiction books that includes the award winning Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949.
Visit Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His books can be purchased from Amazon through the
following link:

On December 22, 1978, John Wayne Gacy confessed to police
to killing over two dozen boys and young men and burying their bodies under his
suburban Chicago home. Two years later, Gacy was convicted of 33 sex-related
murders, which had been committed between 1972 and 1978, and given the death
penalty. At the time, he was the worst serial killer in modern American
history.

Outwardly, Gacy appeared to have a relatively normal
middle-class upbringing; however, by some accounts, he had an abusive alcoholic
father and also experienced health issues in his youth. In 1964, he married and
moved with his wife to Iowa, where he managed his father-in-law’s Kentucky
Fried Chicken restaurants. The couple had two children. However, Gacy’s wife
divorced him after he was charged with sexually assaulting one of his male
employees in 1968. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released due
to good behavior after serving only a fraction of his sentence.

Gacy moved back to Chicago, where he started a
contracting company and remarried. However, the seemingly respectable
businessman, who became involved in local politics and once had his photograph
taken with then-first lady Rosalynn Carter, was leading a double life as a
sexual predator. He committed his first known murder in 1972. Gacy’s victims
included male prostitutes as well as teenagers who worked for his company.
Typically, he lured his victims back to his home and tricked them into being
handcuffed or having a rope tied around their necks. Afterward, he’d knock them
out with chloroform and then rape, torture and murder them. As he was a well-known
community figure, who sometimes dressed up as a clown to entertain sick
children, his crimes initially went undetected.

The heavy-set serial killer came under suspicion in
December 1978 when authorities investigating the disappearance of teenager Robert
Piest discovered that the boy was last seen with Gacy. After learning of Gacy’s
sex-crime conviction in Iowa, police searched his Norwood Park home. They
noticed a strong odor coming from a crawl space but at first thought it was
from a damaged sewage pipe. Several items, including a store receipt, were
later found at Gacy’s home that linked him to Piest and other young men who had
been reported missing. After Gacy confessed, investigators recovered 29 corpses
buried on his property, as well as four more that he’d dumped in nearby rivers
when he ran out of room at home.

After his conviction, Gacy spent 14 years on Death Row,
during which time he drew paintings of clowns and other figures that sold for
thousands of dollars. On May 10, 1994, having exhausted all his appeals, the
52-year-old Gacy, who the media dubbed the Killer Clown, was put to death by
legal injection at Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois.

Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of six nonfiction books that include the award winning Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949.
Visit Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through the
following link:

Monday, December 15, 2014

This week (December 15-21) in crime history – Singer John
Brown began serving prison term for assault and other crimes (December 15,
1988); Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death for war crimes (December 15,
1961); Federal Judge Robert Vance was killed by mail bomb (December 16, 1989);
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was sentenced to life in prison for attempted
assassination of President Ford (December 17, 1975); John Kehoe, last of the
Molly Maguires was executed (December 18, 1878); Three black men are beaten by
group of white teens in Howard Beach (December 20, 1986); Socialite Sunny von
Bulow was found unconscious at her Rhode Island mansion (December 21, 1980).

Highlighted crime story
of the week -

On December 21, 1980, wealthy socialite Martha
"Sunny" von Bulow was found unconscious on the marble bathroom floor
of her Newport, Rhode Island, mansion; the result of what appeared to be an
insulin overdose. Following a long investigation, Sunny's husband, Claus von
Bulow, was charged with two counts of attempted murder and was convicted in a
sensational trial in 1982. But the conviction was later overturned, and Claus
was acquitted at a second trial in 1985.

Sunny Crawford, the only daughter of a wealthy oil and
gas businessman, married Danish social climber Claus von Bulow in 1966. The
couple enjoyed a glamorous lifestyle together, but the marriage apparently hit
troubled times, particularly after daughter Cosima was born, and the two began
sleeping in separate bedrooms. Claus, who had no independent source of income,
was reportedly angry that Sunny was sitting on a $75 million fortune.

After Sunny fell into the coma, her personal secretary
came forward, alleging that Claus kept a black bag containing insulin in his
closet. With this information, Sunny's children pressed for a deeper
investigation into Claus' involvement and eventually convinced authorities that
there was enough evidence to prosecute. In fact, her coma on December 21 was
not Sunny's first brush with death. Less than a year earlier, she had
mysteriously lapsed into a coma but eventually recovered. At the time, friends
and family noted that Claus seemed strangely unconcerned. He had tried to blame
the coma on Sunny's alleged alcoholism, despite the fact that there were no
traces of alcohol found in her system, and medical officials had no explanation
for the coma.

During the investigation, police discovered that Claus
had been having an affair with a former soap opera actress. The actress
testified that she had issued Claus an ultimatum date that closely corresponded
to the date of Sunny's first coma. Many believed the circumstances surrounding
both of Sunny's comas undeniably implicated Claus. The case was boosted into
the public's consciousness by the second trial, which was televised and the
bestselling book Reversal of Fortune,
which focused on the efforts of Claus' defense team to get his conviction
overturned.

After Claus was convicted in 1982, he hired famous
defense attorney Alan Dershowitz to handle his appeal. Dershowitz, who
uncovered evidence suggesting that Sunny's coma may have been self-induced,
also found enough discrepancies in the secretary's testimony to have Claus'
conviction overturned. Soon after, Sunny's children filed suit against Claus,
who settled the suit by agreeing to renounce all claims to Sunny's fortune. He
then promptly relocated to London. Sunny remained in a persistent vegetative
state until her death in 2008.

Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of six nonfiction books that includes the award winning Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949.
Visit Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.comfor more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through
the following link:

On December 8, 1980, singer John Lennon was shot and killed
by Mark David Chapman outside his apartment building in New York City. After
committing the murder, Chapman waited calmly outside, reading a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Chapman was a
troubled individual who was obsessed with Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the
J.D. Salinger's novel about a disaffected youth, and with various celebrities.
While working as a security guard in Hawaii, he decided that Lennon was a phony
and, while listening to Beatles tapes, Chapman decided to plan his murder. Chapman
purchased a gun and traveled to New York. Although he called his wife to tell
her that he was in New York to shoot Lennon, she ignored his threats. Unable to
buy bullets in New York due to strict laws, Chapman flew to Atlanta and
purchased hollow-nosed rounds.

On the day of the murder, Chapman bought an extra copy of
The Catcher in the Rye and joined
fans waiting outside The Dakota, Lennon's apartment building. That evening, as
Lennon walked by on his way into the building, Chapman shot him in the back and
then fired two additional bullets into his shoulder as the singer wrenched
around in pain. On June 8, 1980, just two weeks before he was scheduled to
present an insanity defense at trial, Chapman pleaded guilty to murder and was
sentenced to 20 years-to-life. Ironically, Chapman was sent to Attica prison,
where 10 years earlier, rioting had inspired Lennon and wife, Yoko Ono, to
record a benefit song to "free all prisoners everywhere." In prison,
Chapman became a born-again Christian and spends his time writing evangelical
tracts for publication.

Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”

Michael Thomas Barry is columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of six nonfiction books that include Murder
& Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949. Visit
Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His books can be purchased from Amazon through the
following link:

On December 5, 1873, Bridget Landregan was found beaten
and strangled to death in the Boston suburb of Dorchester. According to
witnesses, a man in black clothes and a flowing cape attempted to sexually
assault the dead girl before running away. In 1874, a man fitting the same description
clubbed another young girl, Mary Sullivan, to death. His third victim, Mary
Tynan, was bludgeoned in her bed in 1875. Although she survived for a year
after the severe attack, she was never able to identify her attacker.

Residents of Boston were shocked to learn that the killer
had been among them all along. Thomas Piper, the sexton at the Warren Avenue
Baptist Church, was known for his flowing black cape, but because he was
friendly with the parishioners, nobody suspected his involvement. But when
five-year-old Mabel Young, who was last seen with the sexton, was found dead in
the church's belfry in the summer of 1876, Piper became the prime suspect.
Young's skull had been crushed with a wooden club. Piper, who was dubbed
"The Boston Belfry Murderer," confessed to the four killings after
his arrest. He was convicted and sentenced to die, and he was hanged on May 26,
1876.

Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of six nonfiction books that include the award winning Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949.
Visit Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His books can be purchased from Amazon through the
following link: